


Six is Not One

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Post-Canon, Siblings, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-30
Updated: 2011-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:03:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shelley Godfrey and a random Two try to put the pieces of their history together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six is Not One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rose_griffes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rose_griffes/gifts).



> The counting song is inspired by [Come and I Will Sing You](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtbvxFOqdsA).

_What is one?  
One once was.  
One was one and all alone and never more shall be.  
And dance, dance, everyone dance, on the Earth so green, oh.  
_

Shelley woke up that morning, as she usually did, from a dream of Gaius Baltar. In this dream he was with her in the house that had been his in a world that was gone. They lay side by side in his bed, his hand barely glancing over her side. Shelley knew that meant sex, but then, for Gaius, so did waking up in the morning or drinking coffee. He smiled that oh-so-knowing smile of his, the one he waves at the world like his own personal flag, and she could barely breathe for how much she loved him. She awoke, covered in sweat, on the dirt floor of a small cabin. Outside was Earth.

After the first year of their colony had passed Shelley had still not found a place for herself. They had little use for a journalist, or another politician, and she had no talent at farming. She thought of becoming a prostitute, she had done that before, but then it hadn't been her, no more than she had married Gaius. Gaius was in the next village. He was married to a Six who was nothing like her. Shelley still dreamed about him every night. So that morning she did what she always did: she tended her garden, tried to get vegetables to grow, and fed the chickens in her backyard.

There wasn't much use for a journalist on this Earth, but Shelley still couldn't help noticing things. There was a puzzle here, something Shelley couldn't understand. There was no way to get paper, so she jotted down notes in the dirt behind her cabin.

1\. I can't have children and I don't know why.  
2\. I still love Gaius, and the person he married is me and isn't.  
3\. The Twos and Eights are like each other. So were the Ones, Fours and Fives. The Sixes aren't. I'm not sure why we're different.

Her brothers and sisters had spread out, one or two to each human village. Her village had only one other Cylon, a Two who still called himself Leoben. He had the strength of all his model and needed little sleep, so during the day he watched the children of the human villagers and at night he tended his own fields. She could see how he loved the children, and how careful he was with them. When he was with the children they were always outside, in full view of their parents and any other adult who would happen to come by. She supposed that made sense. She remembered helping her brother take a child from her human mother. But then, that hadn't been her. It also hadn't been him, for all that he wouldn't take a different name.

 _What is Two?  
Two once was.  
Two is in the earth and sky  
One was one and all alone and never more shall be.  
And dance, dance, everyone dance, on the Earth so green, oh.  
_

The first time Shelley heard the village children singing the song she assumed her brother wrote it, since it seemed to be about the Cylon models and didn't seem to make any sense. When she asked Leoben about it he shook his head, though. "Maybe it was Hera," he said. "Or maybe the children just heard me talking."

"Maybe," Shelley said. "Earth and sky?"

Leoben shrugged. "Maybe it's just that I have my head in the clouds." Then he had to run and get back to the very complicated game he was playing with the children. He seemed to be teaching them molecular chemistry by having them pretend to be different kinds of atoms and then having them run around in different combinations. She couldn't imagine how this would be of any use to these children, but she supposed it wouldn't be less useful than journalism.

 _What is Three?  
Three once was.  
Three is daughter, mother, father  
Two is in the earth and sky  
One was one and all alone and never more shall be.  
And dance, dance, everyone dance, on the Earth so green, oh.  
_

Her sister Three had died over and over again looking for the Final Five. Then she had died for the last time in the place that they came from. The Final Five were important for some reason, that Shelley knew, but for some reason Shelly couldn't remember what that reason was.

"Do you ever think about having children of your own?" she asked her brother that night. "Maybe marry a human woman from the village and have children with her?" Shelley laughed when the utter revulsion on her brother's face told her everything she needed to know. "It's ok," she said, "I feel the same way. Gaius..." she began, and then didn't know how to continue. _I dream about sex with him every night. I think about him every waking minute. All I want is to have his child._

"I still have visions," Leoben said.

He didn't say anything else. After a minute Shelley asked, "Are they about you?" He didn't answer. Leoben used to speak about destiny. She wondered if there was enough destiny for all of them.

 _What is Four?  
Four once was.  
Four was the bringer of life and death  
Three is daughter, mother, father  
Two is in the earth and sky  
One was one and all alone and never more shall be.  
And dance, dance, everyone dance, on the Earth so green, oh._

 _What is Five?  
Five once was.  
Five was hidden and revealed  
Four was the bringer of life and death  
Three is daughter, mother, father  
Two is in the earth and sky  
One was one and all alone and never more shall be.  
And dance, dance, everyone dance, on the Earth so green, oh._

Shelley still mourned her brothers Four and Five. Four had always been so idealistic, with his passionate belief that Cylons would learn to make life between them. And Five, well, he was loyal and good at keeping secrets. She didn't mourn One, though. And yes, he had been the leader of the opposing forces in the Cylon civil war, but there was something else, something besides that, something she could almost remember.

Another list, scribbled in the dirt behind her cabin:

1\. I still love Gaius. I don't want anyone else.  
2\. My brother still has visions. They're not about him.  
3\. I don't know if there's enough destiny for all of us.

 

 _What is Six?  
Six once was.  
Six is not one, never was  
Five was hidden and revealed  
Four was the bringer of life and death  
Three is daughter, mother, father  
Two is in the earth and sky  
One was one and all alone and never more shall be.  
And dance, dance, everyone dance, on the Earth so green, oh._

"That's all I get?" Shelley asked her brother, while he was taking a break from teaching calculus to ten-year-olds. "You're in the earth and sky and I just get to not be one?"

"It's important," he said. "There's something you can do that none of us can."

At least this time he didn't deny writing it. "So, what is it that you're trying to get me to do?"

Leoben looked down, opened his mouth, closed it. "I don't know," he said. "I can almost see it....I don't know what all the words mean either." There was an awkward moment, then he ran back to the children. He was happy with them, she could tell. But this was not the future his visions had shown him.

Shelley went home, looked at the list in the dirt, and carefully scratched out three more points:

4\. The children are singing 'Six is not one.'

She thought of Gaius and how she would never stop loving him. There was one of him and many of her.

5\. I think I was supposed to only be one person.  
6\. But I'm not.

 _And therefore,_ she thought, _it was someone other than God who made me._

She remembered the Centurions she had thought of as her parents. They had held her in their metal arms, they had fed her and clothed her and held her when she cried. She was made from them, but they had not made her. She thought it had been God who made her, but it had been someone else.

The memories were faint, but they were still there, and suddenly she knew why she hated One, what One had done to her. There was someone who had made her, someone she almost remembered, and One had taken those memories away.

But Six is not One.

 _And dance, dance, everyone dance, on the Earth so green, oh._

Her feet knew where to go so she let them carry her, down the hill and over to the next village. She knew where she was heading. She was a journalist. She could discover things that people wanted to hide. _She_ could, not Six but _her_ , Shelley, her.

She knocked on the door and Ellen answered it.

"I remember you," Shelley said.


End file.
